Online social networks allow people to create profiles with data about themselves or relevant to themselves and share content with their friends or others connected to them. Such networks, in some form, date back to the 1970s and 1980s, while other new online social networks, whether they be mailing lists or entire platforms for exchanging content, are constantly being developed. Popular networks include Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, and MeetUp.com. Older networks typically consisted of mailing lists and the like, such as Yahoo Groups, Internet Newsgroups, Fidonet, and so forth. Sometimes, the fact that a person is a member of such a service indicates the group (i.e., a person who subscribes to the “New Jersey Lawyers Mailing List”) is a member of a group of New Jersey lawyers. Alternately, a group can be indicated within the social network platform (i.e., a member of Linkedin might join an “Animal Lovers” group and be listed amongst others who are members).
These groups are an improvement over e-mail by itself, because communication is, or can be, provided in the context of the group with which one is associated. An e-mail from someone on a mailing list typically indicates the name of the mailing list in the subject line. A message from a user on a social network typically displays, or can display, the name of a group in which both parties are members. These group designations are limited to their usages on the online social networks,
In a different technology realm—the telephone—the device predates the online social networks. However, the telephone lacks the ability to designate a group. While ANI and CallerID (Caller Identification) protocols are known, such protocols only deliver to a called party a phone number, and sometimes a name, of a calling party. The called party will not know in what context the call is being made.
Prior art patents have attempted to bridge this gap. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,310,944 to Brisebois et al. discloses the generation of context information in phone calls, such location data, which may be given to a called party. U.S. Pat. No. 6,768,792 to Brown et al. discloses passing on data to the called party such as location, scheduling information, path of the call, billing information, and the like. U.S. Pat. No. 6,005,870 to Leung et al. discloses prompting the calling party to enter more information to be passed on to the called party. However, these inventions, while providing some context to the call, are often limited to general information (i.e, caller location) and cannot provide data indicating a specific relationship or joint group identity between the calling party and called party.